Or whoever wrote this article is somebody with an (over?) active interest in academic affairs and independence of the media. I can think of one current media editor and ex-DPEW that could apply to.

I suppose it all depends on your priorities. If you don't have an interest in media independence or academic representation then you'd think this is 'over-dramatic scaremongering'. If you do, you'd write this article.

It all comes down to an individual's point of view. Although from the discussion I'd say both the reporter and 'ridiculous' commenting above are on the extremes of these points of view and everybody else can't give a damn either way.

I can't see how it compares to the Another Union is Possible campaign however.

I'd just like to say that I was involved in the decision not to have the AAO on the management comittee. The simple fact is the weekly running of the office and day to day financial stuff is not something the AAO needs to be dealing with. Its just another meeting, on an already busy schedule.

Out of interest, how many other people were involved in that decision? Or was it just your personal opinion that was sought? No offence, and I'm that sure should they have been asked others would agree with you, however even engineers could see that asking one academic representative is a very small statistical sample to make a decision on. Especially when this decision will never affect you personally.

Also, how often did you have to go to the meeting? I'm struggling to get the context of all this.

Of course it will affect me personally; the new constitution will come into effect immediately.

The Management committee meets every week and mainly discusses issues with club budgets, finances and ents, none of which affect the AAO role or the academic representation of students in the faculty. If it did the AAO should attend.

In terms of meetings the AAO sits on more College committees than any other guilds officer, and a lot of work goes into preparing for these meetings in terms of forming opinions from relevant departments. These meetings do affect students academically, which is why I put so much time and effort into preparing for them and don't see the need for the AAO to attend meetings that are not relevant to the position.

"Bizarrely the Royal School of Mines CSC Chair, who is elected entirely seperately of the CGCU, is listed as a voting member of the Executive aswell which is perhaps a token gesture from Guilds President, Mark Mearing-Smith who promised in his manifesto to "protect the RSM identity and make welfare and representation accessible to Miners"."

You can see that this is not marked as tracked changed so must of obviously already been there.

Also the RSM President is voted from the students from the two RSM departments, all of whom are in the Faculty of Engineering.

Guildsman is correct. The voting membership of Exec for the RSM President is not a new addition. While the article did not expressly state that it was a new addition I can easily see how the writer could be misleading and have ammended accordingly. Along with correcting some of the terrible spelling.

And on a personal note... I don't agree with the whole of the article but it raises some interesting questions which is why it was published. It's a slow news season...

Alex, I recognise that Management Committee was useless to you this year, there was no point in you turning up. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think you only turned up twice, when we were discussing academic representation, which seems like a sensible arrangement and can't have taken as much time away from you as your comments suggest.

However, I don't think Management should be that way. A well 'managed' committee should be overlooking all aspects of Guilds, not just the events and finances. Representation shuld be discussed more often. But this doesn't have to be in a formal meeting, and it doesn't have to be every week. (There isn't enough to discuss for a start, and paper pushing for the sake of it winds everyone up).

'Management Committee' should cover all aspects of Guilds work and should be a way of informing the President of what is going on in those multiple facets. It is a good way of ensuring that the President keeps a broad overview of what is going on. No criticism to Mark as this is mostly a problem with the structures but I imagine Mark knows more about what is going to be kept in which filing cabinet drawer than he does about the academic and welfare concerns of his students. Which is more important?

I agree that the current set up is not favourable to an AAO but if that is the case the Consitution needs changing so that it is more flexible to the Officers trying to implement it and to allow a more effective 'Management' strategy. I would have liked to have had a wider discussion about making the AAO a 'Vice-President (Education)' or something similar but these Constitutional Changes were really rather half-hearted and did more damage than good (in my opinion).

I'm dangerously close to ranting so I'll stop there but in answer to yawn, no one takes Guilds seriously, which is maybe the problem. Rewriting constitutions isn't going to solve that but the underlying principles of an organisation are laid out in those pages and I think Guilds has got it all wrong.

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